ItвЂ™s interesting to see how the current crop of emcees, or their personas, portray their reaction to outsized fame Drake, for instance, seems burdened by it, as he crooned on the track вЂњCompanyвЂќ from the album If YouвЂ™re Reading This ItвЂ™s Too Late, вЂњI need some company, I need some company/I need you to take my mind off being in my prime.вЂќ Drake is often positioned as a kind of foil to Kendrick, and not without cause-two years before he released Good Kid, M.A.D.D.

It uses narrative as more than a method for reflecting the conditions of KendrickвЂ™s life instead, it attempts to reveal his inner life. Rather than merely reflecting perceived reality, the album attempts to declare and intellectualize decisions, filtered through oneвЂ™s life and memory. It deals with a man who has imposed his will upon the larger world, which has responded in kind with fame and excess, forcing him to actively seek and decide his precise place in the world. To Pimp a Butterfly demonstrates a malleable interiority, constantly shifting from song to song, through various black musical forms and sounds and through KendrickвЂ™s varied vocal inflections, octaves, and flows. Sight is at the heart of bearing witness in art James Baldwin understood the importance of simply watching the worldвЂ™s gears chew and grind before reporting back his findings, capturing both the outer world and his inner life with his essays and novels, using his lens to zoom in and out. If listened to from beginning to end, it displays a widening perspective as Kendrick matures, like a cameraвЂ™s aperture opening for more light. It follows the structure of a coming-of-age story-a sub-genre defined by a young person growing with the knowledge, the realization, that there is a larger world that equally responds to and is unconcerned with the young personвЂ™s actions. City contains the basic, essential elements of a novel: a protagonist faced with an antagonistic outer world, plot and its arc-from opening scene to crisis to climax on down to denouement, a narrative connected through scenes, and character development and expression through dialogue. Kendrick LamarвЂ™s debut album Good Kid, M.A.D.D. For a work to be novelistic, in this sense, requires more than the inclusion of certain literary devices it must delve into and express the previously invisible, thus intellectualizing and reconciling a individualвЂ™s place in the world as he moves, ages, and transforms over time. In an interview with BOMB Magazine, Alvaro Enrigue defines the novel by its ability to research вЂњsomething that was previously not visible.вЂќ This distills several of the qualities used to distinguish novels from earlier literary forms, namely, their focus on innovation, particularity, and interiority. This essay was originally presented at the 2016 AWP Conference panel The Literary Genius of Kendrick Lamar and has been edited for publication.

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